- Hayley Mills, Pollyanna, 1960. Director David Swift recalled looking over 362 girls for novelist Eleanor H Porter’s goody-two-shoes heroine. They included Patty Duke, but she wasn’t right, either. Meanwhile in London, Mrs Walt Disney and the wife of the studio chief, Bill Anderson, took in the movie everyone was raving about. Tiger Bay – introducing Hayley, daughter of the UK star John Mills. The perfect Pollyanna, they kept saying until their guys also saw the film – and agreed. Pollyanna became the first of Hayley’’s six film contract with Uncle Walt! Daddy John was not so kind… “You are like a great big white cabbage,” John Mills told his daughter after her first morning’s (awful) work in Hollywood. “Yes, really boring!” She improved enough to win a special Oscar for her 1960 work, at age 14. Duke got hers two years later for The Miracle Worker… and John Mills was the 1970 best supportng actor for Ryan’s Daughter.
- Joey Heatherton, Where Love Has Gone, 1963 We all knew where this murky melo came from. Harold Robbins’ sleazy novel, of course. More essentially from the real, raw Hollywod life he pinched it from. About poor Cheryl Crane, driven to kill the apallingly named gangster Johnny Stompanato to prevent him beating to deathj her mother, Lana Turner. Patty Duke, Natalie Wood’s TV actress sister, Lana, and the unknown Laurel Goodwin, Deborah Walley, were supplanted by the prettier but weak Heatherton as The Daughter. In Robbins’ version, she’s also in love with The Guy and was trying to kill The Mom when he got in the way. Yuck! Manytimes over.
- Merrie Spaeth, The World of Henry Orient, 1964. Merrie never made another film. By 1984, she was a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Director of Media Relations at the White House, pioneering satellite communications and the electronic White House News Service.
- Natalie Wood, The Great Race, 1964. Director Blake Edwartds’ first choice, Jane Fonda, was shooting a better comedy, Cat Ballou. Second notion, Lee Remick, was committed to Broadway. Wood accepted the suffragette Maggie DuBois – as long as head Brother Jack Warner agreed to give her Inside Daisy Clover. Director Blake Edwards wished Warner had refused… Blake wanted Duke or Elizabeth Hartman and did not enjoy the diva-ish Wood. He got his revenge during the largest ever custard pie scene (4,000 pies over five days), hurling them with relish in her face!
- Natalie Wood, Inside Daisy Clover, 1964. Wood told author Gavin Lambert that she’d kill fo the Daisy role. No need, said he, you’re everyone’s #1 choice. Why? OK, it’s similar to her story (or Gypsy’s), quirky Mama and all. But Daisy is 15 when her Hollywood ascension begins. Wood was 27. There were better contenders. Duke, a kid star, herself, was 18; Elizabeth Hartman was 21. Major flop, then. After one more (also with Robert Redford), Natalie quit movies for three years.
- Charmian Carr, The Sound of Music, 1964. Five years before True Grit, Kim Darby was in director Robert Wise’s loop for Liesel Von Trapp. Also seen: Patty Duke, Teri Garr, Sharon Tate and Lesley Ann Warren. Plus four daughters of the famous: Charlie’s Geraldine Chaplin, Judy Garland’s Liza Minnelli, Maureen O’Sullivan’s Mia Farrow and Ann Sothern’s Tisha Sterling. Critic Pauline Kael famously tried to bury “the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat” but it saved Fox from the near bankruptcy of the Cleopatra debacle.
- Joey Heatherton, Where Love Has Gone, 1964 We all knew where this murky melo came from. Harold Robbins’ sleazy novel, of course. More essentially from the real, raw Hollywod life he pinched it from. About poor Cheryl Crane, driven to kill the apallingly named gangster Johnny Stompanato to prevent him beating to death her mother, Lana Turner. Patty Duke, Natalie Wood’s TV actress sister, Lana, and the unknown Laurel Goodwin, Deborah Walley, were supplanted by the prettier but weak Heatherton as The Daufhter. In Robbins’ version, she’s also in love with The Guy and was trying to kill The Mom when he got in the way. Yuck! Many times over.
- Elizabeth Hartman, A Patch of Blue, 1965. Duke’s managers, John and Ethel Ross, steered her away from another handicapped role so soon after The Miracle Worker. Eli zabeth went blind for “my best film ever.” After a mere 14 screen roles, Hartman suicided in 1987.
- Sally Field, The Flying Nun, TV, 1967-1970. First idea on the runway for Sister Bertrille fled faster than Field… Well, she passed on this chosen successor to her unsuccessful Gidget series, and ABC was leaning towards the unknown (then and now) Ronne Troup, when Sal came back. Step-father (and Tarzan and Sally-abuser) Jock Mahoney told her: Think of the regular money. Winning more jokes than kudos, the show almost ruined any career for Field until Joanne Woodward insisted that Sal had to be TV’s Sybil in the outstanding 1976 two-parter about a girl with multiple personalities – 16 of them.
- Katharine Ross, The Graduate, 1967.
- Mia Farrow, Rosemary’s Baby, 1967. A tough year for Patty. Making Valley of the Dolls in February, refusing The Graduate in April and then losing Rosemary Woodhouse in August. She did, however, play Rosie nine years later in the tele-sequel, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby – he’s been ado 1967. pted by a brothel’s madame in the South West! He was played by Stephen McHattie, one year younger than his mother!
- Liza Minnelli, The Sterile Cuckoo, 1969. Pookie was offered to Patty before the word from London on Liza’s debut, Charlie Bubbles, 1967.
- Meredith Baxter, The Cat Creature, TV, 1973. ABC suits wanted Duke for the lead. “Completely wrong,” insisted director Curtis Harrington. After losing Diahann Carroll, he booked Baxter such an homage to Val Lewton’s feline movies of the 40’s that Kent Smith (having survived Cat People, 1942, and The Curse of the Cat People, 1943) agreed to be killed… by a cat.
- Sally Field, Sybil, TV, 1976. Based on a real case, Sybil had multiple personalities – 16 of them! Patty Duke, Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood were up for them. Field was more determined. “I had worked my whole life – lived my whole life – to play this rôle. I knew her. She belonged to me.” Through April and May, Sal kept reading, testing, auditioning, call it what you will, in her baggy, ragamuffin clothes, for four people in a business office, including “the ldast interested” director Anthony Page, who wanted Vanessa Redgrave. (“Who wouldn’t?” said Sal). She would leave the group stunned, totally confused. “How on earth could The Flying Nunbe the best choice!” To prove she was wrong for the part – or right! – she tested with Joanne Woopdward, who’d been here before in The Three Faces of Eve, 1956, and was now set for Sybil’s shrink. (She had been asked to be Sybil). After the videotaping, Woodward told the suits: “If Sally is not cast as Sybil, then I won’t be your Dr Wilbur.” Oh, and Daniel Petrie directed. Sal won an Emmy, with two Oscars to come In her non-airborne future.
- Kathleen Quinlan, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, 1977. Passed in the 60s because now she had no wish to be married and work simultaneously
- Jessica Lange, Frances, 1982.
Howard Hawks said she always seemed to be shining. “More talent than anyone I ever worked with.” She and Vivien Leigh were beaten by Ingrid Bergman to For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1942. She’s the subject of various books, plays (viz Sally Clarke’s Saint Frances of Hollywood), pop and rock songs – French-Canadian singer Mylène Farmer even took her name. All actresses loved her talent and guts (when wrongfully committed to asylums by her parents) and wanted to ply… Frances Farmer. From the sublime to the ridiculous: Meryl Streep to Susan Dey of TV’s Partridge Family. Kim Basinger tested with Sam Shepard (Lange’s husband). Undaunted Susan Blakely made her own 1983 TVersion (from Farmer’s book, Will There Really Be A Morning?). Plus Anne Archer, Blythe Danner, Patty Duke, Mia Farrow, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Glenda Jackson, Diane Keaton, Liza Minnelli, Katharine Ross, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, Sissy Spacek, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood. Plus Constance Money, who met with producer Mel Brooks and debuting director Graeme Clifford. They liked her. Not her CV. Seven porno fikms in three years. Even if they used her real name (Sue Jensen), someone would have blown an expensive whistle about her hardcore career. - Sally Field, Soapdish, 1991. Still close rivals after 24 years.
- Kate Mulgrew, Star Trek: Voyager, TV, 1995-2001.
Birth year: 1946Death year: 2016Other name: Casting Calls: 18